The proposed studies extend our ongoing research on the development, evaluation and dissemination of cost-effective approaches for training parents as teachers of their retarded children. In previous work we have developed and studied alternative formats of a curriculum to train parents to more competently teach skills and manage behavior problems with their pre-adolescent moderately to severely retarded children. We have assessed the continuation of teaching post-training and have found predictors of successful outcome. One major component of the present proposal is to develop and evaluate alternative programs. We will extend our predictor research, cross-validating them with a sample of families trained by community agencies. We will develop alternative training approaches for families predicted to do poorly in the standard training, including mainly multi-problem and lower socio-economic status families. This research will build on our pilot study of a more action-oriented approach to these families. In collaboration with community agencies, we will also develop specific programs for retarded parents and those who are Spanish-speaking only. We will also study several alternative approaches to enhancing parental follow-through post-training. Finally, we propose to develop and evaluate a program to train parents in evaluation and advocacy skills, to supplement their role as teachers. The second major component is to study the adoption and adaptation of parent training by agencies and to explore cost-effective dissemination strategies.